Victoria Darlington
Personality Victoria is a dreamer and an explorer. She longs to learn, and she longs to learn about all things. This drive trancends most ordinary drives to learn, however. She seeks to learn facts about the universe, like the scientists, yes. But it goes beyond that. Like the scientists, she seeks facts about how the universe works. Like the hackers, she sees information about how the world works, whats being kept secret, and the nature of information itself. Like the mystics, she seeks information about her own mind and how it works. Like the psychologists and the dreamers, she seeks to learn why others think and feel the way they do, too. This sort of scope goes beyond normal hungers for learning. She is very driven in this sense, ambitious for knowledge.But at the same time this hunger for knowledge is tempered by patience and, in a way, silence. She will not violate her notions of ethics or philosophy for the sake of quick learning or an easier path. In a way, her pursuit is very inwardly focused, rather then outwardly focused. This isn't to say she wouldn't like to make the world a better place, but she realizes that, in the end, someone who disagrees with her (or is a sleeper) has to -want- to become more enlightened. You can't force wisdom or even simple knowledge upon anyone. So while she does what she can for those she can, she also focuses on trying to improve herself, primarily. For what use is it to try and improve others or the world if one does not better themselves? Not that much of this comes across in her average, everyday interactions in the physical world, of course. Being a Virtual Adept, her 'real' personality and her inner thoughts and persona can be a bit different. In the meat, she can easily come across as shy and reserved. But when something is at stake, or when one has gotten to know her, or when she's in the Dreaming realms or Virtual World...well, then her actual personality tends to shine through more often then not. Current Paradigm Technically speaking, Victoria is a member of a fringe faction in the Virtual Adepts called "Reality Hackers". All Virtual Adepts want to change the world, and have a focus on 'upgrading' humanity from our world, Reality 1.0, to a new world, Reality 2.0. Traditional Virtual adepts do this via hypertechnology and virtual reality, creating a technological singularity they can escape into. Reality hackers, however, do them one better. They hold that the entire universe is one big computer program. Physics are the rules of the programming system, while the things like birds, flowers, stars, people, are the code itself. Like the Matrix, basically. So instead of hacking into some remote VR world, they want to hack reality itself. Victoria does this via her mind, using her mind and dreams as a computer in the same fashion that 'traditional' virtual adepts might use some electronic super-computer they've built. This allows her to do almost all of the traditional things 'normal' Virtual Adepts do, including access the Virtual Web, hack into comptuer systems, spy on remote locatiions, etc...but also other things that they couldn't begin to imagine, like hack into other people's dreams, store files and information within her mind, and so on. It goes beyond that, however. Though the 'programming tools' she uses to 'interface with the operating system of her mind' are things like meditation and lucid dreaming, she realizes that dreams arn't just a tool, they are also the point. Just exploring Virtual Spaces and dreamrealms isn't enough; to acheive personal enlightenment or help with Global Awakening, she has to explore the depths of her own psyche, to continuously challenge her own boundaries and perceptions. Strengths: This paradigm is much more creative then most Virtual Adept paradigm, much less static, and its been becoming less static as time goes on. Moreover, most Virtual Adepts, even if they can mentally connect to their computers via the Virtual Web, don't literally download and run computer programs into their mind. Victoria does that all the time. Then, of course, there are the obvious inherent advantages to the 'Reality Hacker' methodology itself.... Weaknesses: Becoming less static is one thing, but in the end, Victoria is still as limited to her 'tools' as other Virtual Adepts, even if she calls them by different names. More importantly and more significantly, the fact that she uses Mind to treat her brain as a computer means that she's vulnerable to computer viruses, as depicted in the 'Reality Hacker' link, above. If you thought getting spyware on your computer was bad, how about getting it in your mind? This could potentially apply to mental disorders of people whose dreams she invades, too. To make a long lesson short; always run your antivirus software and keep it up to date. ''Also, due to the emphasis on mental landscapes and dreamscapes, Quiet is perhaps more of an ongoing threat for Victoria then it is for other mages. Also, loosing track of how long its been since you returned to your body and fed it...or forgetting where your body was...could both be very, very bad. Avatar and Ascension '''Ascension': For Victoria, the quest for personal Ascension is the same as the quest for global awakening of the sleepers. You can't help the rest of the world if you don't help yourself, and you can't help yourself if you don't care about the world around you. Everything has to be in balance. Along those lines, her current vision of global awakening is exactly that; allowing the sleepers to all awaken to the fact that their dreams, which they can shape and control, are no less 'real' then the waking world. Avatar: Victoria's avatar has always had far more of a mystical bent then her. Even when she was a fairly standard Virtual Adept who looked at technology and magic in fairly static ways, it was always there, pushing her, prodding her into growing into something more. A calm, creative, purposeful avatar, its goal is for her to ascend, for her to push her boundaries. It pushes her to seek after new knowledge and information, to be creative and imaginative, and to never be satisfied with where she is now. In this task it has largely succeeded in shifting Victoria's personal philosophies and bents towards its own. Sometimes, when it has something particularly important to show her, and wants her to -know it-, it will appear as the 'Universal Google', a search engine. More often however, it is less a specific form then a pattern of creativity, which will appear often in her dreamscapes. Perhaps a series of birds flying in a particular way towards something of significance, that she should think of. Or perhaps a very particular mathematical pattern which will show up again and again. They are recognizable to Victoria, which is the important part. Often, their meaning is indirect, but persistant, and if she doesn't understand it one way, it will try various tactics to get its meaning across until she understands. Spheres and Focii Correspondence: There isn't any real difference between places. That is to say, all distance is an illusion. Its just the same as distance in a videogame; the only difference is a data array. Just like you can use a good bit of computer code to hack a data array, by modifying your own perceptions to hack the data-arrays of reality (often called 'Space-time' by the physicists), you can change where things appear to be. Nothing has actually moved, of course, but then again, they didn't have physical locations in the first place, since they are really just information. Most Virtual Adeptss use computers to acheive such effects, but Victoria uses her mind as a computer. After all, just as one can use a part of a program to hack the program, her mind is a part of the universe, and thus the perfect interface. Correspondence Focii: Meditation Personam Correspondence Names: Space-time, Universal Data Arrays Mind: Since reality is just information, there really arn't too many things that are 'real' in any meaninfful sense. By 'meaningful sense', Victoria means 'things that arn't just information'. Everything, you see, can be reduced to just patterns of information floating around in the universal code. Unfortunetly for humanity, the mind is also just another pattern of information, albeit one of the more complex ones. More interestingly, a mind is a type of pattern within the universal code so complex that it has gained self-awareness, and the ability to manipulate other patterns around it. In any case, there's no real difference between a mind and a very complex computer, or Artificial Intelligence. Minds can be hacked, and just like hacking a computer, all it takes is the right amount of skill, and time.The easiest way to interact with another's mind is by starting with your own mind. It isn't enough to think, you have to get into the programming code, the software package of your thoughts. So she uses Lucid Dreaming to operate the software of her mind, turning it into the computer it really is if only we'd see and understand it. Through dreams, Victoria can influence and affect her own mind, reprogramming it and organizing it and its internal structure, the same way she'd organize a computer. More difficult...but even more fun...is tapping into the dreams of others...and therefore their minds. Some might think using dreams as a focus/programming tool is a bit inconvienent, but not for Victoria, who has no problem slipping into or out of sleep at a moments' notice, as per Mind 3. Just takes about as much time as booting up a computer. Which, actually, you know, can be a bit inconvienent.... Mind Focii: Dreaming Personal Mind Names: Mind-Hacking, Mind-Programming, etc. Prime: Reality is information. There are many different ways to manipulate this information and your perception of it in order to change reality. Different bits of information can take different forms, but they are all coded in the same programming language, and that language is Prime. Prime is, literally, the Matrix-Code of the Universe, and using Prime, one can perceive that code. Perceiving the patterns that represent specific things within the code can be more tricky, and usually requires the other spheres in conjunction with Prime. What these other spheres do is let you not only pick out the patterns that represent The Code itself, but become adept at recognizing and utilizing more specific, specialized patterns in certain ways. But with Prime itself, one has a good start, because not only are all those patterns composed of Prime, but everything between them is Prime, too. So if you want to insert a new pattern into the Universal Data Arrays, or whatever, you need to be able to perceive and utilize that code. The way she uses patterns as a focus is to look for patterns in her surrounding environment, and especially regarding what she wants to do. Think of this as being akin to inducing a weird mental state; except without the trippiness of LSD or the calming focus of meditation. A schizophrenic might look at differing sentences in a newspaper until they see conspiracies everywhere, or an ordinary person might stare at a 'magic eye' photo until they convince themselves they see fish or dolphins or whatever is supposedly hidden behind it. A cryptographer might stare at a set of numbers until they see the words behind it. In practical terms, its ...kinda akin to this. Think of it as looking at the current environment and making Enigma rolls until a significant pattern of some sort is seen and discerned. By unlocking and discovering that pattern, she unlocks the Prime. In a perfectly bland, sterile room with no patterns of any sort, no use of prime would be possible. It doesn't have to be some deep secret puzzle; patterns occur in nature all the time, from its greatest to its smallest levels. Prime Focii: Patterns Personal Prime Names: The Code Backgrounds Sanctum: Unlike most Sanctums, Victoria's is not an actual physical place. Except it is... its rather hard to explain. By mixing the typical methods of creating a Sanctum with Mind and Correspondence, she's created a permanent 'Sanctuary' out of her own dreams. Essentially, a permanent dream that she can access via lucid dreaming/meditation/Mind 3/etc. She goes to this area by default when first dreaming each night, and stores information there in the same fashion most Virtual Adepts would store information on a computer. It works in all respects like a normal Sanctuary, it just happens to be in a drastically different form then most Mages'. Obviously, the Sanctum bonuses do not apply when she's venturing into the dreams of others, which she does very, very often. History Victoria Darlington was born in London, England. Her father was a lobbyist for a financial company, and her mother was a computer programmer. Both viewed the purpose of life as to work, to make enough money to buy nice stuff, and to retire someday down the line, in many, many years. When Victoria was 3, her father transferred from the London division to the Washington, DC division, taking his family with him. His mother eventually got a new job, writing software to automate advertisements for online businesses and to keep track of advertising clicks. They could not possibly be more boring or less creative as human beings. They didn't quite know what to do with little Victoria. She was a quiet girl. She never cried as a baby, not once in the whole first six months they had her (which actually worried them), and she rarely put up a fuss or had a tantrum. She went to sleep easily. Which was all well and good. But....she had a habit of getting into...trouble. As a toddler, she would pull at cords, trying to figure out what they were, and broke many appliances this way. She would stack up cabinets and climb up atop the kitchen counters when left unattended for any length of time. She almost got stuck in the fridge once, and he parents weren't even sure how she got it open, not being strong enough or tall enough. She did, however, have the strength to open up the chocolate syrup... She went to a private school, where she had friends. She wasn't a total outcast, but she was far from popular or well liked. She didn't angst over it, she actually felt pity for the popular, vain, shallow types, and was more then content with her few close friends. In her spare time, as hobbies, she played video-games and programmed computers, which was still rather a boy thing to do back then, but whatever. Anyways, by the age of 12 she had already created some simple video games, for her own use, and had rejected religion, which she had quite a few arguments with her parents over. She was quite proud of her programming skills too, and even her ability to defeat the copy protection on her video-games, until she discovered the computer her parents had bought her, and all the games that game with it, were from the 80's, and she was basically doing computation from the completely wrong decade. It both didn't matter to her – she had nothing better to compare it against, and was a rather crushing disappointment, as once she finally got internet access, she was completely behind on everything. She was nowhere near as good with computers as she thought she was. Though, you know, if it really -had- been the 80's, she -would- have been quite good. As it was, she didn't touch a computer again for a few years, not for programming at least. She gave up. This would be an important lesson to her later in life, in similar situations. Anyways, she had a fairly normal childhood, besides. She was an imaginative girl, but very static in her ways of thinking. Religion was fake, magic was fake, UFO's were fake, you could trust the government even if politicians were stupid, ghosts were fake...and so on, and so forth. The Technocracy would have loved her, really. The only thing separating her from the complete and utter banality of her parents was the fact that she was more creative then they could ever hope to be, and enjoyed reading and fantasizing even if nothing like that could ever possibly happen. When she was 16, she learned how to drive. When she was 17, she went to the Senior Prom with her 'best guy friend' - she didn't go to the Junior one for lack of a date - and graduated from High-school a year early, having skipped her sophomore year. She applied to college at UCLA, and was accepted as a computer science major. She hadn't programmed in several years, but...she knew what she wanted to do. As a woman, or at least, a girl who thought she was a woman, she was definitely a geek. She had little pink t-shirts with the words 'Geek' printed upon them in blue, with lots of hearts and flowers. A girl geek, but a geek. She dated, some. She fooled around on the internet a lot. Programming, open source stuff, bit-torrent. The whole online civil rights scene. Fighting for the freedom of information against the man. Kicking the ass of boys in Halo (or other) tournaments who were too stupid to realize that any girl playing against them in the venues she was playing against them would have to be twice as good. Doing the same in hacking competitions, later. She wasn't malicious, but everyone had to do their part. The RIAA, the MPIAA, the feds, governments like China, Iran, Australia....these sort of people wanted to kill the last truly free realm left in the world, and most people didn't even realize it, let alone care. Someone had to do something. She thought she was pretty hot stuff, actually, at least in terms of hacking skills. It wasn't her hacking skills, however, which caused her to awaken. She was programming, helping create a dark network to allow people in China to bypass the Great Firewall. She wasn't the only one on the dev team, of course, just one person. One night, around 4:30 in the morning, she was programming, and she read an email from one of the other members of the dev team. This particular dev team member was from China, and had given them extensive information on the Great Firewall, from the Chinese perspective, before going offline. They were not entirely sure what had happened to the person. In any case, she was reading his notes, and programming. He might have been dead, or in prison, or anything at all. But she was reading his notes, and programming. And for a moment, a brief moment, she realized that no matter where he was, or what situation he was in, she was with him. She understood his thoughts by reading his notes. The differences in time and space were just...an illusion. They may be physically separate, but their minds, for that moment, shared the same data-space. And it wasn't an illusion, because everything was data. And so, in her minds eye she saw reality for what it was; information. All the physical laws, all the processes of physics and evolution, everything she had ever known was just information, and it was her perception of that information which gave it form. The Copenhagen Interpretation, Schrodinger's cat...it was all -literal-! And for that moment, unlimited possibilities were open before her. She would have considered -anything-, anything at all, in that one moment. In her minds eye, she could see the point at which all of time and space were one, and nothing more then pure information. She had awakened. She soon found herself approached by other Virtual Adepts, and shown the ropes. She found out she wasn't the hot stuff she had thought she was; she was right back down at the bottom of the totem poll again, in terms of eliteness. And there was so much to learn. About computers, about the true nature of reality. About the social habits of her fellow 'Virtual Adepts'. She wasn't as skilled as her mentors or brethren, and neither did she spend -quite- as much time online. Alright, so she still spent -alot- of time online, but it wasn't the 16+ hours a day that some were spending. But she certainly had more social skills then many of them. In any event, social skills aside, she was a rather typical, rather banal Virtual Adept back then. She used computers as her focii, she utterly believed in science, and the potentials of science. She saw transhumanism as the great goal, and...she was fairly...average for Virtual Adept, as average as any mage can be, anyways. Her initial studies focused on the Universal Data Arrays, and a bit on the Code. She tried to learn what she could at her own pace from the other Virtual Adepts, and tried to impress them. She mostly ended up asking lots of 'lamer' questions in the Virtual World they created for themselves. It was a bit harder on her, because she didn't have one set mentor, she only had a chat-room, basically, and learning the ropes from a chat-room is alot like being a 5 year old on a playground, and asking the 7 year olds if you can play, too. You just aren't cool enough. So she had it a bit rough. She'd try to impress the others. You know, the usual. Programming cool tricks, trying to come up with a neat concept for a virus, a wicked hack. A piece of information or a feat that none had managed. But as bad-ass as she was before she became Enlightened, by sleeper standards...she just couldn't manage to be very elite now. It was rather depressing, actually. Actually, she was more depressed back then, then before she had awakened. She wasn't listening to her avatar much, yet. She was more in touch with herself then some Virtual Adepts, but still not very in touch with herself. She would dream of it, of course. And it would try to point her along a path...but she hadn't really learned to listen to it yet, and wouldn't until her first Seeking. Her seeking, and the -process- of the years which followed it taught her to listen to it, taught her that there were more important things then science, and taught her the importance of dreams, self-exploration, and ethics. All of this is ironic, as it was what would have been to any casual observer a very banal, hope-destroying experience. But it wasn't so, for her. The suffering, along with listening to her avatar, turned her into a different person, a better person, the sort of person who could take hope from despair, or smile at a blade of grass. It wasn't until she did something completely, mind-bendingly stupid that her worldviews began to change. She had dropped out of college by then, of course. She had to separate her old life from her new one, lest her old life suffer. She was living under a new identity, with a new name. What, you didn't think that Victoria was necessarily her -original- name, did you? Hah! In any case, as far as the world was concerned, she was an average college-aged girl, who was born and raised in Las Vegas, who was attending community college part time in Grand Junction, Colorado. She was getting most of her income from hacking, or freelance programming jobs. Summer came along, and she decided she wanted to do something to enhance her cred with the other Virtual Adepts. So she joined a raid on a technocracy data-center. The data-center was in Boston, MA, and a number of Adepts had gathered together to raid it. Real world, not virtual. It was harder, because it had a closed-loop system. It wasn't actually connected to the internet. No correspondence. The adepts found a way, however. Public utility and phone lines, for the win. They used the utility lines of a building next-door, and some creative use of correspondence to gain access to the place's internal networks, and... Well, lets just say it wasn't pretty. No, not for the technocracy. They were fine, some data loss aside. No, not for the other VA. For Victoria. She couldn't cut it, and was abandoned as an unskilled lamer. Ouch. The memories of the next week or two of her life are not pleasant. She wasn't sure if it was a technocracy virtual reality program, or a drug-induced illusion, or a dream, or her own mind playing tricks on her, or just...something real, but she met someone while in there. A fellow prisoner. The memories are a bit hazy, you see, even with later data retrieval. Actually, she'd rather any data from that time be lost, less some hidden virus be slipped in amongst the memories. The prisoner was an Akashic. His meditation kept him safe, deep inside his mind, protected from anything the technocracy could do to him. He wasn't in the same room as her, not ever, but he could perceive her with his mind, and make contact. And though he couldn't manage much more then that in the heavily static paradigm of the data-center, conversation helped them both. When they were tortured, or drugged, or hope seemed gone, they could talk to each other. And in the midst of the worst situation for a Mage to be in, because of that contact, there was hope. And that hope is what began the change, began to make her realize that it wasn't transhumanism or science, necessarily, that held the answers, or the keys to happiness. It wa something simplier. So they talked. And he opened her mind to things she'd never really articulated before in any real detail. Philosophy. Ethics. The power of the mind, and the role of perception on reality. He didn't change her mind, not on any big things, but he got her thinking, got her interested. And it helped, in that place. Mental contact with him vanished, eventually, and she wasn't sure what happened. And then things got worse. She slipped in and out of drug induced hazes; had strange dreams of the 'Universal Google', where she was using the search engine of reality to try and find a computer capable of letting her hack her way out of the prison she was in. Eventually she realized she did have a computer. The -Akashic- had a computer. He was using his own mind to hack reality. She could do the same thing. Except, of course, all she really knew about how to use her mind in this fashion was what little she had heard on the 'net, and what little she had learned from him. But she couldn't just go out and 'hack reality' with the computer of her mind. She had no skills with which to do so, and she had no tools. In her dreams, however, she found the way. She dreamed she was using a search engine again, searching for a way out. But no matter how much she searched, all she found out was that she was dreaming. And then she realized the truth. Every Sleeper and Awakened, ever, have their own version of Reality 2.0, that they access all the time. They dream. And there were already tools which could allow anyone...even Sleepers...to awaken within their own dreams to control them. Victoria would learn to hack her own dreams, and through them, reshape Reality 1.0 in the same fashion most Adepts were trying to do with their Digital Web. And she did it. She used her mind instead of a computer, from within her own dreams. And she did it without a real computer, or internet access. At least, long enough to hack her way out. She wasn't very -good- at it, mind. IIt was primitive, it was brute force...but she did it. Using only her mind, she hacked into the computer systems of the facility, disabled the security. And she got out. She didn't see any sign of the Akashic, unfortunately, nor would she see any sign of him ever again. She felt bad about that. Of course, after the experience her worldview changed. Obviously, about the role the mind should play when using computers, but seeing it just in those terms is missing the point. The experience probably should have broken or destroyed her, or at the very least given her nightmares for the rest of her life, and a fear of ever being captured again. But its not so. She was actually happier as a person after she escaped then before she was ever captured! Even ignoring the paradigm shift, she had learned to listen to her avatar, she had learned of the importance of human contact, and her own feelings. You didn't need to achieve Ascension to be happy, you didn't need to create Reality 2.0. The keys to happiness were as simple as being true to yourself, listening to your dreams, and enjoying human contact. And she had those things even in the heart of the Technocracy. This is the heart and soul of Victoria, here. She would spend the next few -years- of her life exploring her inner mind, exploring the minds of others, trying to help the sleepers, and trying to become a better person. She would grow -tremendously- during that time, enough to count as a Seeking itself. She would spend days at a time asleep, exploring the dreams of others and trying to help them work through their problems, to inspire them from within their own mind or lift them out of their depressions. When she wants to relax, she'll sit within dreamscapes and just...create them, create mental places and things, like someone painting a picture, but inside her head. But none of that would have been possible if she had not come to these singular, vital realizations. And so, because she was happy despite her sufferings inside the technocracy, she would never be unhappy again. Oh, of course we all have our moments of sadness, where things don't work out. But she had overcome the long, slow disappointments of her life. She had overcome any persistent feelings of sadness she had, or a lack of hope. Because if she could get through that, and be fine, she'd get through anything. And the technocracy, even if they killed or captured every member of the Traditions in the world, could never win. Because as long as there was still human contact, companionship, and dreams, hope and creativity would never die. Its been a long time since then. She was about 20 then, she's about 24 now. She's had new adventures, both in Virtual Space, and in dreams, and in physical reality. She's lost things, she's learned things. She's suffered, as anyone else has suffered in the World of Darkness. Its not a kind place or an easy place, its the sort which scars you, eats you up and spits you out broken and unclean. But...you know, she's fine. She really is. Its not about the end-goal for her, its about the process. The growth, the exploration, the joy of exploring herself, the creativity of creating mental landscapes. Being happy is a state of mind now, not a result of her external world. She's learned to listen to her avatar. Its hard, sometimes, because hers can be hard to recognize at first. If she's in a really deep rut, it appears as a search engine, the 'Universal Google', prodding and poking and guiding at her, helping her maintain her faith in the darker moments of this harsh world, or helping guide her back to her body after almost being lost within the dreams of another. Most often, its just there to remind her that there are things inside, feelings, which endure for anyone. Even sleepers. Even her. Other times it will appear in minor forms, different forms. Often she'll recognize it right away, but sometimes she won't recognize it until after its gone. Its less of a specific form then a reoccurring pattern, a style composed of a driving, moving, creativity that shows up of its own accord within her dreamscapes. This would be weird for others, but looking for patterns is something she can understand, and so makes sense for her. Thats why she came to crystal springs, actually. Not any concrete information, but an intuition borne through contact with her avatar. It seemed to be driving her onwards through the dreams of others, and eventually she found herself spending more and more time in the dreams of those in one particular city. Taking the events as a hint, she decided perhaps it wanted her to go there, and so under its indirect but persistent guidance, she did so. Chargen Sheet Expertises & Specialties Specialties: Intelligence: Creative Computer: Hacking Expertise: Science: Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, Biology Technology: Computers Lore: Dreaming Academics: Philosophy, Literature Performance: Acting Merits & Flaws Flaw: Lifesaver - Victoria is very firm in her moral and philosophical principles. She makes a concerted effort to actually act in a way that lives up to what she has decided is right, and what she has decided is wrong. Therefore, she will not participate in senseless death and/or violence, and will attempt to protect Sleepers in her presence if it is at all possible for her to do so. She will not let a Sleeper die, be put at risk, or suffer for her moral beliefs if she can prevent this from happening however, and thus will kill to protect the Sleepers, or those whom endanger them, barring only certain willfully ignorant/evil Sleepers whom are beyond the boundries of what one could term an innocent. She won't even necessarily kill to protect herself, preferring to find a way to disable such an opponent first, if possible. Flaw: Driving Goal -''' Victoria seeks both personal enlightenment, and global awakening of the sleepers. She realizes that both are impossible and unlikely goals, but she seeks them anyways. One of her deepest motivations, along these lines, is to continuously improve herself morally, intellectually, and spiritually. This is different from your average mage which might say 'Oh yeah this is a nice thing' in some abstract sense in that she actually gives a damn about it, and on an average basis is actually trying to do it, even if only in very small steps. '''Flaw: Strangeness - Partially due to the amount of time she spends in strange mental landscapes, Victoria is very prone to strange events. Often these have an archetypical or dreamlike quality to them, but they can, as per the flaw, take any sort of aspect. On an OOC note, this flaw is probably great for inducing randomn rp. Also, for potential ideas on what -might- really be causing this, or at least contributing, see her Avatar notes. Merit: Force of Personality - Though Victoria can seem quiet, shy and reserved at times, especially in the physical world, when she does bring the weight of her drive and convictions to bear, she's hard to ignore, even if you disagree with her. Some people just have a sort of inner fire, and she's one of them. Merit: Code of Honor - Though the philosophical justifications and minor details change depending on Victoria's current philosophical and ethical musings, in general Victoria does a rather rare thing, compared to most people. Namely, she attempts to actually live out her ethical beliefs, even if they are a hideous inconvenience to her, or would make her suffer in some way. This includes not shopping at Wal-mart, which most people wouldn't bother with, but also extends to things like not killing someone whose attacking her if she can disable them instead. She also doesn't break her given word, though she has no problem tricking or deceiving those that deserve it, if she makes a promise she'll stick to it. Note that despite her moral attitudes in other regards, such as life (see above), she still has a 'hacker morality', which is to say, you can steal information all you want because noone can own it, and doing things to free information, even if that would otherwise cause financial or property harm, isn't immoral as long as no real people or items get hurt. She's more reserved about stealing of 'physical' stuff, and probably wouldn't do it unless she had a good reason. But she has no problem destroying corporate computer systems, financial records, and so on, or waging wars of information and perception in the Digital Web. Neither does she have a problem 'hacking' into people's dreams or thoughts. Information, after all, is free and should be open to all. Merit: Lightning Calculator ''' - Victoria has a mind like the edge of a razor. This has been honed through studying mathematics, physics, biology, psychology...the traditional scientific disciplines...but also through study of meditation, lucid dreaming, and explorations of mental Dreamscapes. Moreover, because of her paradigm, her mind often literally doubles as a computer for her. '''Merit: Fast Learner - See: Merit - Lightning Calculator Chargen Sheet Application Workthrough Tradition: Virtual Adept Essence: Questing Stats: 7/5/3 Character Experience: Completed Prior Seekings: 2 Attributes: 7: Perception:3 Intelligence:4 Wits: 3 5: Charisma: 3 Manipulation: 3 Appearance: 2 3: Strength: 2 Dex: 2 Sta: 2 Merits/Flaws: Lifesaver (-3), Strangeness (-1), Driving Goal, (-3) Force of Personality (+2), Code of Honor (+1), Fast Learner (+3), Lightning Calculator (+1) ******************** Base Skill Spends: Talents: Insight: 2, Empathy: 2, Primal-Urge: 1 *** Total 5 Skills: 9 Meditation: 3, Performance: 2, Technology: 2 - Computers, Research: 2 *** Total 9 Knowledges: Cosmology: 2, Computer: 3, Enigmas: 2, Lore: Dreams 1, Science: 2 - Physics, Biology, Occult: 2, Academics 2 *** Total 13 ********************************************************* Freebie Ability Spends: Computer 3 to 4 (1 Freebie Ability Bought), Lore: Dreams 1 to 2 (1 Freebie Ability Bought), Academics 1 to 2 (1 Freebie Ability Bought), Ethics 1 to 3 (2 Freebie Abilities Bought), Expression 0 to 2 (2 Freebie Abilities Bought), Craft: Dreams 0 to 2 (2 freebie points bought) Total Freebie Abilities Bought: 9 Total Freebie Ability Points Spent: 18 Final Ability Sheet, Base + Freebies Talents: Insight: 2, Empathy: 2, Expression: 2 Primal-Urge: 1, Ethics: 3 Skills: 9 Meditation: 3, Performance: 2, Technology: 2 - Computers, Research: 2, Craft: Dreams 2 Knowledges: Cosmology: 2, Computer: 4, Enigmas: 2, Lore: Dreams 2, Science: 2 - Physics, Biology, Occult: 2, Academics 2 ***************************************************** Backgrounds: 7 Base Background Points: Avatar 2, Arcane 2, Sanctum: 2 Dream: 1 Freebie Backgrounds Bought: Dream (set to 5), 5 Points Avatar (set to 3), 1 point Resources (set to 2), 2 points Total Freebies Spent on Backgrounds: 8 points Arete: Starts at 1 Arete: Bought to 3 with freebies (8) Willpower: Base of 5 3''' freebie points of Willpower bought 18 Abilities + 8 Backgrounds + 8 Arete + 3 Willpower = '''37 Points Of Freebies Spent Sphere Levels, all via Base Spends or Seekings: Correespondence 3 Mind: 3 Prime: 2 Category:Character Archive